The Waste Land
by fleetwood-mouse
Summary: "Only, there is shadow under this red rock. (Come in under the shadow of this red rock.) And I will show you something different from either, your shadow at morning striding behind you, or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust." A series of (non-consecutive and non-related) one-shots based on lines from T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land."
1. The Third

DISCLAIMER: I have no affiliation whatsoever with Moffat, Gattis, or the estates of Arthur Conan Doyle or T.S. Eliot, to whom all the credit for this universe belongs. Aside from the fun I had writing it, I have not and will not profit from this story in any way.

They have just turned to leave when, from where she is squatting in the dirt, she reaches out an imploring hand to stop them. "Wait," she says, and John watches the wind move through Sherlock's black curls as he drops back into a crouching position beside her.

"What is it?" he asks, voice a low rumble, barely distinguishable from the cars passing overhead.

Her lips part like a moth's wings, and she speaks. "Who is the third who walks always beside you?"

John Watson feels the back of his neck prickle. The banks of the Thames lie behind him, the grimy supports of the bridge suspended above, and he knows this, and he does not turn around to look. His Browning is a cold weight tucked into the back of his trousers but he feels a fool for remembering it in this moment.

Sherlock leans forward, tilting his chin and meeting her eyes directly, calmly, as if what she's said is the most ordinary thing in the world, and for her part, she stares back with demanding defiance.

"What did you say?" he asks, and his voice is surprisingly gentle.

"Who is it?" she repeats, setting her teeth and staring, grey into grey. "The third one. With the brown cape. The hood."

Unbidden, John feels a reaction beginning to twitch its way across his face but he stoically swallows it down before it can take root. Still, his eyes feel wild and he fights to keep them fixed on his scuffed shoes in the dirt, the pale curve of Sherlock's neck.

"Man or woman?" Sherlock asks, and John _knows_ that they haven't been followed – Sherlock would have noticed, he always knows. It is damp under the bridge, and chilly. John tries to separate the lapping of the waters from the cars whizzing past overhead from the blood that's now rushing in his ears.

She shakes her head. "Don't know," she replies, and Sherlock nods, waits a beat before reaching into his pocket for his wallet. She makes a negating noise and raises a hand to stop him. "Can't tell," she adds, and Sherlock acknowledges this with a raise of his eyebrows.

She's never been an especially talkative one (though John has the distinct feeling that something about him puts her particularly ill at ease), but she has a tendency to be there when things happen, to see what's going on. She has a knack for trouble – some people are just like that – and she _remembers_, or at least she does when things are good. And when they aren't, she doesn't lie to them. Sherlock listens to her, values her input.

He's still nodding away, the picture of compassion and validation (though John knows that all the while, he must be cataloguing her shabby clothes and the smell of urine, checking for track marks and dilated pupils), but he ignores her protest and presses another note into her hand. "For the next time you see it," he says. "Tell me what you can."

She breathes out and pockets the bill without a word. Her eyes dart to John, who presses his gloved hands into his pockets, and then back to Sherlock. "When I count..." she says, reaching out one hand, swallowing, "…it's only you and him together." Her voice is quiet, and John strains to hear. "But when I look ahead up the white road... there's always another one walking beside you."

Sherlock's nostrils flare at this, but his gaze does not break. He waits expectantly, but she appears to have finished; she falls silent and rocks slightly in place, remaking a double set of footprints in the dirt.

"The white road?" prompts Sherlock, but she offers no further comment, her lips clamping shut as she pulls her knees closer.

Sherlock gives a short huff of breath through his nostrils. "All right," he says mildly. "Next time, then. Watch closely, for me." He rises gracefully to his feet and turns briskly. "John," he says, and abruptly, John remembers that he is part of this conversation, too. And just for a second, Sherlock is looking at him in a certain way, a mixture of pity and amusement, and – oh. John makes an effort to slouch, banishing the stiff military posture he had unconsciously adopted, and the corners of Sherlock's mouth turn wryly upward, blink and you'd miss it.

John swallows. "Ready?" His throat still feels dry and his voice unsteady, but Sherlock gives no indication that he has noticed; he just nods, and they're off to find a cab, off in pursuit of the next link in the chain, the detective and his blogger.

When they've crested the hill and are standing by the side of the road, John looks to Sherlock, and clears his throat again. Usually, the sound alone is enough to win him an answer to his question, or at least a dismissive pejorative, but this time Sherlock says nothing. The sky is grey above them, so overcast that it could be any time of day, and even as they leave the river behind them, a wet chill hangs in the air.

John runs his tongue across his teeth. "Do you think...?" he begins, but can't seem to find a likely finish for the question; nothing seems to quite articulate this vague, misty feeling of meaning obscured.

Sherlock's eyes flick in John's direction and his pale face is a mask, revealing nothing, but his response is just a second too slow. "Honestly, John," he says, blinking, and as he raises his arm upward like a praying mantis, a cab slows in front of them. "Don't be daft."

But he doesn't meet John's eyes in the rearview mirror, nor does he say anything when John leaves the light on in the stairwell when he turns in that night – just like how John doesn't say anything the next morning when he goes to check the weather and Google suggests "white road" as soon as he hits the W key.

He considers mentioning the incident to Ella, hoping that getting it off his chest will alleviate his unease, but she has enough concerns about this new friendship already. There are a lot of things that people carry with them, John knows, and he eventually decides to just let this be one of them. It's not as if one more will make a difference to him, not at this point. And since John Watson is nothing if not a practical man, it's not long before the feeling has faded almost entirely.

But sometimes, without really grasping why, he finds himself looking at the space behind Sherlock, waiting, expecting – and there are times when he thinks Sherlock is doing the same to him. And from time to time, when the sun casts their shadows on the pavement before them, or when he catches sight of their images, side by side, in a reflective surface, John finds himself counting

(_one, two – one, two_)

and wondering why it seems to steady him.

NOTES:  
Nothing makes your questionable writing feel better than stealing from a legitimate genius. Here are the lines that inspired this fic.

"Who is the third who walks always beside you?  
When I count, there are only you and I together  
But when I look ahead up the white road  
There is always another one walking beside you  
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded  
I do not know whether a man or a woman  
—But who is that on the other side of you?"

I'm doing these short prompts as an exercise to improve my writing, so feedback is very much appreciated 3


	2. Roots

His throat is raw and his ears filled with the echoes of screaming, wailing. His shoulder throbs, a bitter, stinging pain. The edges of his vision are blurry but it's John crouched at his feet, John's face floating before his eyes. He sucks in a deep gasp and his chest and throat burn like a lungful of desert sand.

John is saying his name (he can watch John's lips and they are moving, air in and out, and John's nostrils are flaring because he is breathing, he is alive) but his voice sounds strange in Sherlock's ears; its pitch rises and falls like a siren drawing closer.

"John," he croaks and his voice is a wreck. His fingers clutch in John's shirt like roots, tightening into dry fists. John's hands are on him, taking his pulse, steadying him. John's eyes are on him too and his lips are moving but he is addressing someone Sherlock cannot see. "What did you give him?" he demands. Touching Sherlock's face, checking his eyes, John's fingers warm on his cheekbones.

Someone responds; Lestrade, a voice Sherlock recognises but the content unintelligible.

John's neck is marred by a glaring burn, ruddy crimson running north to south. The angriest welts, Sherlock notes, marvelling, have risen up where the gun had been cocked, the revolver, holding Sherlock frozen in place, holding John between two worlds. John had gotten burned?

He tries to reach out, to touch the swath of red stretching across his friend's skin, but his arms are too light for his brain to control them, his feet and legs and head so heavy. The sting in his shoulder is fading (_needle_, supplies some wispy, vacant section of his mind that remembers what to do about pain), everything, in fact, is fading down to that furious splotch of colour.

"The cabby's gun," he says, and his English feels like it's being spoken backwards but by the softening of steel gray, he sees that John can understand him (of course John can understand him; John is always the one to put Sherlock back together, to collect the pieces when they shatter apart). "It was the cabby's gun?"

John looms closer; his face is distorted in his concern, taking up all of Sherlock's vision, his lungs. "Yes," he says, and the sibilant winds its way around Sherlock's rib cage as the lines in John's face flicker. "Sherlock," (his face is pained, twisted), "how could you not know?"

And there's no way he couldn't have known, because he had been the one to call the cabbie out on it in the first place, and besides, he's Sherlock Holmes – something like that could never

_(but he hadn't known, he hadn't, because when they had forced John to his knees and jammed it below his jaw, Sherlock had shut down in the worst possible way – he could see everything around him, every detail, every piece of information and his eyes were stretched wide open but not one of it did him a bit of good, despite it all there was nothing he could do for John and he had fought, body wracked with the struggle but held in place by the knowledge that one step forward would bring it one second closer, and he had watched in agony the progressive twitches of the three muscles needed to pull a trigger and his world had gone over dark and screaming) _

have escaped him, and John knows that, knows what Sherlock can see and do, and so that's why he is crouched here looking so heartbreakingly concerned when he should be rejoicing, singing to proclaim his own resurrection, the miracle that Sherlock had pocketed somewhere between the moment his life was saved and the dawning instant where his eyes were opened to how extraordinary John was.

_How could you not know?_

All the tension wound up inside of Sherlock escapes him in one ragged exhale, one corrosive sob, and he slumps forward and his forehead rests against John's and everything is so much quieter, finally.

It's still quiet when he awakes (four hours later, to judge by the chill in the air and the hum of traffic outside) and his eyes open in his bed, where John is lying beside him on cream-coloured sheets. John's eyes are closed, his mouth slack in sleep, his breathing even. He is lying half-curled on his side, and the paperback book he had been holding in his right hand has fallen closed, the bookmark askew beside it.

John is there, Sherlock realises, because he won't permit Sherlock one moment of doubt. He won't allow Sherlock to awake, disoriented and groggy and drugged, and think even for one scathing instant that he is dead.

It's because John knows, John has known loss and he understands fear. He learned it in Afghanistan, stranded in a sea of sand after a deafening blast, floundering in the heat of the sun, bleeding out where the rock gave no sign of water, frantic to know what had happened to the rest of his squad. And he'd learned it again, Sherlock had showed him – had _had_ to show him – that desperation like that could follow you home, that even in London there were places in where there was nowhere to hide, no rock or tree that could provide shelter.

And he must have stirred because John is awake now, asking him gently if he's all right, trying to hold back his concern but still staring at Sherlock like he's just pulled him out of the Thames. Sherlock tries to answer, reassure him, but his voice breaks and he's almost impressed at how he must have been shrieking for the pain to last this long.

John sighs and his face scrunches up again. He looks like he wants to curl in on himself, but then his eyes clear and Sherlock sees resolve in them. He straightens up and sets his jaw, looking Sherlock directly in the eye, freezing him in place with his stare so there can be no mistake about whatever comes next.

"Sherlock," he says and his voice is calm, filled with military authority. "You know that... I would never have let you think that." He swallows, and Sherlock can read the honesty in his eyes, how badly he needs to be believed. "I couldn't. Not..." He shakes his head.

And this is John so Sherlock can hear what he's not saying: _Not after that._

He sees John watching him and he knows, then, all he can think is how bloody _unfair_ it is, what they seem to have done to each other, when out of all the people in the world each of them just wants to keep the other safe and this is what comes of it.

John is still watching him, silent, as Sherlock sits up just enough to lie the book (paperback, bought used and well-loved since – and God, it feels incredible to be able to _think_ again) on the bedside table so that there's nothing lying between them in the silence.

And he doesn't say a word but he hardly needs to because this is John and John is always there watching him, John is always waiting for his signal, and while the world might not be a fair and balanced place, Sherlock might have to stop complaining because John is alive and John is reaching for him and there is no way he deserves any of this. So Sherlock stays quiet until he can't anymore (and John is so gentle with him) and when they fall asleep, he doesn't dream, not of grasping, thirsty brambles nor the beating sun nor the endless sea of sand.

NOTES:

"What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow  
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,  
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only  
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,  
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,  
And the dry stone no sound of water."

This is one of my favorite passages. I might even use it again because it deserves something that is less unapologetically melodramatic.


	3. The Key

_**i. I have heard the key  
Turn in the door once and turn once only  
We think of the key, each in his prison  
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison**_

He can hear the thundering of waterfalls in his ears—or is it only the rumbling of the lorry? Could the time have come already? It's too soon—where is _John_?

This time, Sherlock does understand that he could be wrong, that he can't expect to have gotten it all right, because there's always something, and besides, this is Jim, and Jim isn't like any—_wasn't_, Jim wasn't like anyone else; Jim was like him

_(you're me)_

but now Jim's blood is pooling around his head and so Sherlock has to face something to which he thought he had reconciled himself to the possibility of having made a mistake, big or small, but the key itself? As long as the key exists, all Sherlock will have to do is die and the data will stay secure, tucked away safe and sound, but now the dits and dahs he's meticulously recorded in his mind palace have turned out to mean nothing, to be as meaningless and random as the sins and secrets of the ants swarming mindlessly through the streets of London. Which means that Sherlock has lost the failsafe, lost the key to the bonds that hold Lestrade and Mrs Hudson and John, bonds that they will never observe, a fate against which they cannot defend themselves.

And there is only one way to undo it; the only way to go back is one small step forward, a little kick of his heels and the fervent hope that his timing is right—or if not right, at least wrong enough to kill rather than maim, because a coma, paraplegia, anything that can lock Sherlock into this life and this identity is a guarantee that John will never be safe.

He looks down and John's here now, looking up, face incredulous and wary in a way that makes Sherlock think of Coventry, and of all the men and women of other towns all over England who must have once turned their eyes to the sky in disbelief, and he wonders for a second which category this falls into.

"Keep your eyes fixed on me," he says, and he can only hope that John will follow him in this like he did through the streets the night before (like he does through everything), that Sherlock's performance will be convincing enough to break the cuffs that link them.

How funny that he'd made John his hostage then, and how cruelly inaccurate because John is his gaoler—is he not?—and John is the noose now closing around his neck. John is both the rock that anchors him to this earth and the weight dragging him toward the ground, and John will be the key to executing this plan, if only Sherlock can do this one thing, if only Sherlock can convince him.

"I'm a fake," he tells John through his mobile, and his face is wet and his eyes sting as he stares into the morning sun. _I'm a fake._ Is this what it feels like to have a heart? How can people stand it, how can they stand any of it?

And now John is arguing with him, of course, because John is stubborn and steadfast and John loves him, John is determined to hold tightly to him, not knowing that all Sherlock can do is drag him to his death—and if he did know, well, maybe even then. And that is precisely why, that is the force that has propelled Sherlock up here to the roof where he can look down at the street and leave his note and take that one deep breath to steel his courage for the fall.

Water rushes in his ears but he knows it's only the pounding of blood in his veins. There are tears on his face and his mobile feels cold against his cheek, and he blinks, banishing scores of memories of a warm hand on his skin, tender stitches and compresses and salves. This time, he'll have to put himself back together.

"Goodbye, John." His fingers go limp, all the strength sapped out of him, and his mobile drops from his hand and clatters to the rooftop behind him. He takes a deep breath.

**ii. **_**I have heard the key  
Turn in the door once and turn once only  
We think of the key, each in his prison**_

The concrete is cold against his cheek, and his neck cramps, bent at an alarming angle to create a shocking effect when they do come back for him, and they will, they will. It might be minutes, it might be hours, but they will come and he knows it, and so he holds that position, blood pounding in his veins, moving only to scratch his fingernails against the floor and into the walls.

He's perfecting the graceful ring of an O when he hears the click of the key, and it turns so slowly, so deliberately that for one delirious moment (ears ringing, mouth dry since he overturned their offer of water in the floor beside him) he thinks he may have the time to etch out the C and maybe even part of the K as well, but then he hears the echo of the bolt and the whisper of the heavy door across the ground. He waits for a beat before turning his eyes upward and—yes, even if he hadn't recognised the gait, even if he had been unable to extrapolate this reappearance from their previous little chat, Jim knows that he has won this round too.

"The Iceman cometh," he quotes, eyes tracing up the pin-striped legs (a new cut of suit; trying to disguise a few unwanted pounds) to a crisp jacket and even crisper, cooler visage. "My, my—could it _be_?"

Mycroft Holmes says nothing, just turns his back on Jim, and a second later, Jim hears the sound of metal dragging across the floor. He's brought the stool again—after all, what's a king without his throne? Jim would be the last person to begrudge someone that little trapping.

Besides, Jim could have it out from under him in a second, have this posh little man lying stunned on his back on the hard concrete, soft hands shielding his face against the stool raised over Jim's head like a battleaxe. But they both know that Jim doesn't like to get his hands dirty.

"There's a library, you realise," says Mycroft—and there he goes, crossing his legs. "You could have full access to it. If you're feeling bored, that is."

But another thing they both know is that that's not what Jim wants, that there's only one subject that can make him unglass his eyes, watch Mycroft's lips; one key to make Jim's own lips move, and it's not any of the keys on the jangling ring that Mycroft's assistant carries, nor something that can be encoded onto a USB stick or (_oh, yes yes yes_) into Morse code. No, the only key for Jim's lock lives and breathes and even (_dare he say it—all right of course he does)_ loves.

Jim pointedly does not look at the word beneath his fingers, nor at any of its cousins etched into every flat surface the cell has to offer. His very own singing, dancing Iceman is equally purposeful in the way he does not let out a resigned sigh or re-cross his legs or lean forward for a better view of his audience, but still, Jim thinks, nobody could have missed that _it's_ _story time, boys and girls_, _gather round_, and dear me, is that the Storyteller sprawled out all over the floor?

The Iceman clears his throat, clears every possible cloud of expression from his carved features, folds his hands. "Where did I leave off?"

Mycroft's voice grows louder as he speak, echoing off the walls of the empty room, but _oh_, Jim can still hear it, the sound of his key turning, and as data floods his ears, Jim lies still as a corpse in his web on the floor and a smile flushes over his face.

**i. **_**I have heard the key  
Turn in the door once and turn once only**_

John is about to head up for bed when he hears it. His foot has gone to sleep beneath him in his familiar armchair, and the beer on the table has gone flat. He's been sticking to just two, but often finds himself uneasy about even reaching that limit, so while the first bottle had smoothly, blissfully down his dry throat, the fizz when he opened the second was too loud, echoing off the walls of the empty room, and he had left it mostly untouched beside the reading lamp, its life fizzing busily up and away in hopeful little bubbles as John tried to ignore the silence.

He's stretching out his leg and wiggling his toes, fighting the instinct to reach out and massage it away. That's a remedy for muscle cramps and psychosomatic war wounds; pins and needles, however, it will only make worse. Once the prickling fades into a painless tingling, he will get up and

(_ignoring the almost plaintive posture of his empty chair, arms still stretched toward its brother_)

make his way upstairs. The beer, he will pour down the sink when he washes the breakfast dishes. He was right to stop buying the nice Belgian stuff; even if he wanted to drink for the taste, he wasn't sure he could appreciate it.

John lays his book on the table and sets one foot on the floor, but then he hears it and he goes perfectly still. His breathing stops of its own accord, and his soldier's ears tune out all the sounds of the street outside to fix in on this sudden impossibility: the sound of a key in the lock.

And John knows that key. It's an absurd thought, it doesn't even bear consideration, but he does. He knows it just as well as he does the subsequent click of the latch, the gentle thud of the door falling closed, and it's just as familiar as gloved fingers dusting talcum powder, or the smell of bow rosin clinging to black curls_,_ and there was no mistaking it, not any of it.

But it was impossible, of course, entirely impossible. John had been there. He had stood frozen, eyes fixed on Sherlock as commanded (as if he could have looked anywhere else, as if he had ever looked anywhere else) and he had watched as each second ticked by, and he had fought the bile in his throat and the pounding, paralysing dizziness in his head, harnessing the power of his fear to carry him through the crowd and to Sherlock's side. And despite it at all, John hadn't believed... not even when he'd reached to take Sherlock's wrist in his hand, he just couldn't, because it hadn't seemed possible, had it, that just like that...

John believes now, though. He hasn't allow himself the delusion of hope because from the start he's known that if he lets himself slip into denial and bargaining, he stands little chance of ever getting out. So he rationed himself, fairly, one chance to get it out of his system, one whispered sentence with one hand cold on a headstone, and then he'd swallowed down the flat, empty way his prayer had fallen, like hailstones onto dry sand, and with it, he'd swallowed his faith, his hope, his previous life.

Since that day, he has never once lain awake at night praying that it was a mistake, persuading himself that it was all a dream and _if he could just wake up somehow_... Because no, John was there, he saw, and so he knows, and that is enough to quiet his heart on those still nights.

But oddly enough, John isn't praying now—why should he be? After all, it doesn't occur to a farmer to pray for rain when it's pounding down around him, or a sailor to pray for succour when the waters are calm. That one solitary click of the lock has flipped a switch inside him and all he can do is sit, stony at attention, as slow, deliberate footsteps

(_not Mrs Hudson's, no, not anyone else's_)

ascend the seventeen steps one at a time.

This should be a horror film, really—the darkened flat; the slow, inevitable creeping; a shot of the stone rolled away—but though John may be paralysed in his armchair, mouth dry and eyes fixed upon the door, fear is one thing he does not feel. Fear, after all, is the luxury of having something left to lose, and this, right now, is the thing that John has lost returning to him, and whether it comes with the shuffling gait and rotting flesh of a B-movie monster or the chains and shackles of Jacob Marley or somehow, miraculously, with piercing blue eyes and John's name on its lips, this is the ultimate thing, the only thing, this is what he has been waiting for, and John is ready to face it.

So he sits and he listens and he waits, steadfast and unmovable, as the footsteps reach the top of the stairs and slow, momentarily, in their progress; stop, finally, in front of the door. There is no knock—of course there is no knock—but John watches, unblinking, as the knob begins to turn, and his heart rate spikes and then dips to normal again because somehow he knows exactly what he is going to see on the other side.

NOTES:  
・I've been sitting on John's part for what feels like decades, but I finally got Sherlock and Jim written the way I like. Let me know what you think!

・Like many of you (oh no can I even say this on here?), I've signed up for the AO3 Fundraising Auction. You can find more information on it here, or you can bid, and since it's for a great cause, I'd encourage you to check out the author list and bid on someone amazing because this is fandom is filled with incredibly talented people and I don't know what I'd do without AO3. And I even re-learned how to do html links for this post so you know it's important. The end.


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